StarstruckEchoid's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Crown Dungeon 2]

A cute little game with some truly surreal puzzles and an equally zany art style to go along with it.

[Monster Sanctuary]

The game has potential for greatness, but is still far away from a finished product.

What works in the game is the core concept: turn-based combat combined with metroidvania platforming is a concept that just works.

However, the control scheme for the game is not optimal, as many players would surely prefer to control movement with WASD, and not arrow keys. Better key bindings or, even better, a way to have custom key bindings would be much appreciated. Also the on-screen keyboard is clunky to use, and absurd when one considers that every player also has an actual keyboard at their disposal.

On top of this, the game is riddled with bugs. The game seems to crash for no particular reason, the monsters actually seem to be strong against their weaknesses and weak against their strengths, and the game also seems to give the CPU a real run for its money despite its simplistic looks.

Speaking of looks, the delightful pixel graphics and the sound design to go with it are some of the best parts of this game, and really fit the retro-game-mashup concept of this game.

In conclusion: This game is yet sligthly unfinished, but clearly has a sharp vision for what it wants to be and has already made much of the work needed to get there. With some more work on ironing out the bugs and on the user interface, this game could become a stellar piece indeed.